Shoot 1UP Hands-on

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Now your extra lives don't have to wait for you to die to join the fight.

By Daemon Hatfield

Mommy's Best Games is back with another Xbox Live Indie offering, only it's not what we were expecting. Fans of the Xbox 360's community games will remember Mommy's Best as the developer of Weapon of Choice, one of our favorite games on the service. At last year's E3 Mommy's Best (which is really just one very nice guy named Nathan Fouts) showed us what was supposed to be its next game, Grapple Buggy. While Grapple Buggy is still on the way, Fouts took a small detour to make a short Indie shmup called Shoot 1UP.

What sets Shoot 1UP apart from other 2D space blasters is that instead of using your extra lives one at a time you play them all at once. Each 1UP you collect will be added to your ship's mass instead of waiting on the sidelines for you to eat a bullet. This way you are constantly gaining more firepower and defenses. The game isn't over until every last ship has been destroyed.

Rawr.

With the triggers you can expand and compact your armada. The wider the swath you cut the more ground you cover with your gunfire and the larger the blast from your primary ship. Of course, the bigger your mass is the harder it is to avoid enemy fire.

Two players can blast their way through the game cooperatively, each with their own armada of 1UPs filling the screen. As you might imagine, the game can be pretty hectic. There is a Ghost power-up to be found that creates a mirror image of your fleet and will double your firepower for a short time.

The art style is very similar to Mommy's Best Games' other offerings. While the scenery isn't terribly exciting the bosses are large and impressive. Our favorite is the "girl boss," basically just a floating woman's head with a dangerous bust.

Shoot 1UP should be out by the end of the month and, with any luck, will only set you back $1. It's a fairly short romp but well worth it for a buck.